Even the smallest meanest work became
A sweet or glad and glorious sacrament.

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June 20, 2016

Badal Sircar, Manmohan Desai, and Ramli Ibrahim

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Lightness of Being and Bearable Joy

Vidya Rao

[TOIST: 26 Aug 2000]

The flute is an ordinary, everyday instrument. A humble reed, played by cowherds, it is the symbol of pastoral simplicity. Made of bamboo the flute is earth-born; yet it contains air, the breath of prana itself, bringing together the heaviest and the lightest of elements-- that which is most rooted, most visible and tangible, and that which is imperceptible and inexperiencable, except in its absence.

Like the nature of the flute, we are indeed small, frail, humble. Flute-like, equally, we hold within ourselves the emptiness that is the playground of prana-- of that there is much to be proud of now-but not so much the vanity and false pride that comes from... objects, relationships, position. It is, instead, a self-respect, and inner dignity, the knowledge of an is-ness and a poise that come from an understanding of the richness of the flute's simplicity, the completeness of its empty space, is elemental paradox of earth and air.

Sunday, July 03, 2005

In a world that is increasingly instrumentalist and consumerist, I think it is very important to set up against such a world the great aspirations of literature and poetry, of painting and music, because art and aesthetic experience adds ardour and passion to our principles and our beliefs. It should be seen as an essential part of our freedom and not an optional part of our lives.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Last week-end, an intensive two-day programme, consisting of play readings, a documentary, speeches and critiques, organised as a tribute to the veteran playwright and theatre personality Badal Sircar, played out to a packed auditorium in Pune. In Mumbai, at the same time, a festival of Asian cinema was inaugurated and has been drawing crowds even through the working week. A fortnight before that, an esoteric presentation by a visiting anthropologist on Mumbai’s cosmopolitanism had eager listeners traveling in from the distant suburbs. Open the papers and the fraternity that is best represented in the celebrity events section is likely to be that of artists: The painters and sculptors who would have had to struggle even to merit a two paragraph review of their works in the newspapers a couple of decades ago. Today, in terms of coverage their field is rivaled possibly only by the written word. Books have never been as ‘in’ as they are today with well publicised launches and reviews in every publication.

What is all this hectic activity an indication of? Is it merely a natural outcome of the middle class revolution that we have been witnessing in recent times — a growing market for culture? Or is it a crying need for intellectual stimulation in a widely dumbed down world? The answer would probably be a little bit of both. The numbers of the urban elite have swelled, providing consumers for a wide range of durables and expensive lifestyle goods. With more money, more education and more leisure time available, culture understandably, has joined the list of profitable commodities. The changing shape of Hindi cinema — moving from the old hold-all formula to different films for different audiences — is probably the best indicator of a maturing market.

But the expanding audiences for more intellectually challenging cultural products also point to the presence of another explanation, one that is a far more compelling motivation then the ones described so far. It is an explanation that is difficult to sum up in a phrase or even to describe in words. And were one to make the attempt, it is likely it would be an unpopular exercise. In fact, put it to people, the purveyors of culture themselves and they would probably be appalled at the suggestion, even be at pains to deny it. For it concerns a concept much maligned these days, the concept of ambiguity.

When did ambiguity become a bad word?

Perhaps back in the ’70s when the education system

and so much else around it started to change.

When calculators took away the need for arithmetic,

when examinations turned essays into multiple choice answers,

when specialisation reared its cold head,

when clocks became numbers and not faces and hands,

when management became a codified science,

when the humanities gave way to technical education

and cricket turned into a fast and furious game.

All these developments brought about a definiteness to things.

They inculcated a reverence for exactitude,

for limits and results. It is a striking indication

of our adaptability that today we can hardly recall

these events that were so controversial not so long ago.

If India’s energetic young work force (and cricket team) is an indicator it is possibly because those changes appear to have served us well. The air of positivity, of growing prosperity, at least for a section of people, seems to reassert the benefits of the new path. At the same time, we have failed perhaps to understand the transformation brought about in the way we think. Sometimes, when young people kill themselves, regretful attention is drawn to the excessive emphasis on examination results. But these are cases of an extreme reaction. Most of us have adjusted without question to a world of certitudes and camps (you are ‘‘for or against’’ an ideology, a political party, an action, as Bush put it on Iraq), targets and short cuts. The shift towards a so-called objectivity demands that we aspire only for the tangible, the easily achievable, the commercially viable. To do otherwise is to be foolhardy and unrealistic.

There is no place in this mindset for doubts

and hesitations, searching or mystery.

‘‘We no longer see the world’’ writes the African writer Ben Okri,

‘‘we no longer marvel at something beautiful.

We’ve stopped noticing. We can’t really remember

the last time we experienced the quickening

of the unknown. The realisation drives away sleep.’’

It is perhaps in the realm of art and certain pursuits

such as ethnography that the ambiguous

still finds a place. Where imagining,

creativity and strangeness are tolerated

without being forced into taggable categories.

It is perhaps why we flock back, seeking

the uncertainty that we have forced out of our lives.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

GEETA DOCTOR

The Hindu Magazine

Sunday, Sep 04, 2005

Malaysian dancer and choreographer, Ramli Ibrahim has heightened awareness of the performing arts. At the Sutra Dance Theatre's home ground at Kuala Lumpur, Ramli Ibrahim holds all the threads that have connected him to the contemporary dance worlds of both East and West with an expert sense of being at ease in many worlds. Ramli follows in the tradition set by a Ram Gopal or even an Uday Shankar in taking the heroic moment by the hand and treading the path that is often so dangerous between becoming too exotic or too enchanted with his own sensuality. By insisting that it is a tribute to Odissi, perhaps, what he is also exploring is this very same appeal to the gorgeousness of Odissi that surrenders to the feminine in all its manifestations of desire. Though the programme has been carefully planned to showcase Ramli's strength as a masculine dancer depicting the eight different facets of Shiva, the piece that he has choreographed for his troupe of young dancers, "Asta Nayika" underlines his versatility.

As he describes it, "Nayikas are analysed according to the dramatic situations in which they find themselves, these in turn manifest in one of the most important moods in traditional dance, drama and paintings — erotic love (Sringara." There is something that is almost innocent in its sweetness in Ramli's handling of the different types of erotic love. The fact that most of his dancers are heart-breakingly young and of mixed parentage and perhaps even with a mixed religious and cultural background seemed to take them back to another era, when ethnicity and nationality were not given precedence and like the early aspirants to places such as Shanthiniketan or Kalakshetra they lived only for dance.

Then again, when we think of the way in which the Balinese Dancers walk down the steps of their ancient temples, balancing several centuries of cultural history on their slim shoulders and making it all their own, we must credit Ramli without creating his own history and stamping a small step on the ladder. He does not ask much, only that we understand his yearning to create a small space for enchantment. Or as he says: "Let its simple message of beauty touch you. That life must be lived to its fullest as it is divine — that everything else changes, but Beauty remains." That is the lesson he has tried to explore for us in "Spellbound — Odissi Live!"

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

AMRITA SHAHThe Indian ExpressSaturday, August 27, 2005

Manmohan Desai, maker of effervescent hits such as Amar Akbar Anthony was known to be scathing about critics. The story goes that he even threw a brick at his TV set during the screening of a highly critically acclaimed art film, so appalled was he by the slow pace of storytelling. The point of this anecdote is to remind readers of a time when mainstream Hindi cinema was perceived by intellectuals — a category in which one could include the film critics so hated by Desai and others who prided themselves on their intelligence, social awareness and good taste — as something to be looked down upon. In fact, if one were to go back to writings on cinema twenty or thirty years ago, one would be sure to find many anguished references to the moronic nature of the typical masala/formula potboiler, its appeal to the lowest common denominator, its unfortunately powerful hold over the illiterate, its role as an opiate for the masses.

So much has changed, however, in the last thirty years that Desai, were he to come back to life today, would be flabbergasted. Many things would probably have to be explained to him. He would have to be told, for instance, about the non resident Indian demand for films and how it provided an entry point for Bollywood to the West. He would have to be shown studies done by western scholars such as, for instance, on the viewership patterns for Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge versus Dil Se and on the chiffon romances of Yash Chopra. Then, after this startling assault of respectability, he could be directed homewards. Where the sort of art filmmakers that once drove him crazy are making films with top stars and the worshipful filmmaking that can entail. In fact he might even learn a thing or two from them about the art of synergising the brand attributes of stars with film marketing.

He would find Bollywood — far from being the preserve of trashy film magazines — to be the staple fare of serious newspapers and television news channels. He would hear about the new economics of cinema in the business news, advances in sound recording in the technology news, see film stars cleaning the streets or fighting for womens’ rights on the city pages, catch the latest scandal in the headlines. And in between, he would learn about contemporary social trends through the relationship and marital problems of his colleagues. At dinner parties he would find himself discussing the latest releases and listening to people critically evaluate them. Then he might come across Ram Gopal Verma observe on a television discussion on — what else — the business of filmmaking, that: ‘‘entertainment has become as important as food.’’ And then perhaps everything would become clear. Cinema is still the opiate. But now everyone’s happy being addicted.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

The Indian ExpressSaturday, September 10, 2005

One needs only to look at past western stereotypes of the Indian mind. Indians, according to foreign travelers, would shake their heads in indecipherable ways to indicate a positive response; Indians when asked how far a certain place is from another, would answer : “very far” or “just here”. In the mid-90s, I interviewed several managers of international firms setting up shop in India for a survey of human resources. All of them claimed that their local employees, while exceedingly capable in many ways, had an infuriating tendency to leave loose ends in their reports.

“Vagueness” and “imprecision” are probably the two words that could best sum up these perceptions. It is not as if these are necessarily negative qualities. There are many who would argue that a recognition of ambiguity has been a distinctive element of our philosophy and culture. But in the hustling, competitive, globalised world we live in, it seems to be the new Indian penchant for exactitude that is giving it a greater confidence.